Tiger Leaping Gorge

Couldn’t stay in Lijiang too long as we wanted to do this two day hike along the Himalayas called Tiger Leaping Gorge.  I’ve been excited about this since I read about it months ago so I was really keen but disaster strikes! The morning of leaving for the hike I get hit with a horrible stomach bug half way to the gorge, not nice at all. Anyway I foolishly decided to try the hike . . . . . 20 mins in and I could barely move, I had absolutely zero energy. But luckily there was a little ray of sunshine following me – a little palomino pony called Little Boy! I hired the pony to take me to the highest part of the trail, it was the best decision I ever made there was no way I could continue without him!

 

The views were so worth it! It was absolutely beautiful, the gorge itself is deeper than the Grand Canyon and the surrounding mountains were as high as Everest base camp. We climbed up to just shy of 3000m, Ben did amazingly but it was fair to say we were both exhausted after the first day and couldn’t wait to get to the guest house half way!

 

I didn’t feel much better the second day but we had to continue on to finish the trek. It wasn’t as difficult as the first day thankfully so I could do it without too much hassle, on the second part of the trek there were loads of waterfalls, it was a really beautiful day.

 The trek was the last thing we were doing in China so after we just took a couple of days to get down the mountains to a city called Kunming where we had flights booked to go to Hanoi, Vietnam. The last few days were cool, all I did really was try to recover from my illness, which sucked but I was really looking forward to starting a new country. I will miss China... just not their rude smelly men who spit all the time!